Who Pays for Our Growth?

Petaluma Tomorrow's green sheet on traffic and growth,
authored by Janice Cader-Thompson and Peter Dunlap

Who pays for the road improvements when builders or land speculators don't have to? The new council majority has quickly approved three controversial development projects, Redwood Technology, Magnolia Park, and Rock Ridge, without discussion of their increased traffic congestion within the surrounding neighborhoods or impact upon city streets and other infrastructure.

The Redwood Technology project will alone add an additional 8,000 car trips per day on to our streets without any deciding who will pay for expanding the Old Redwood Highway over-crossing -- expected price tag 24 million!

Two other projects are racing down the approval pipe-line. The new neighborhood at Deer Creek will add thousands more cars trips per day onto our streets. Additionally, the outlet mall expansion will add an additional 28,874 car trips.

According to environmental reports that account for only three of these five projects, over "One million New Car Trips per year" will be added to our already burdened streets. How will this affect traffic congestion and impact our streets? How does this affect our quality of life? Who is going to pay for this?!

While the newly elected City Council continues to approve more and more building they need to also address who is going to pay for their impact on our streets! Isn't that the platform they ran on, paying for our streets?

The City Council has an obligation to protect the quality of life we enjoy in Petaluma. Our city will grow, but growth does not simply mean more buildings, or more traffic. We need to grow in a direction that preserves the quality of life that makes Petaluma one of the safest and most prosperous cities in California.

Future growth in Petaluma must be linked to getting builders to pay for the full costs of building, and not allow them to pass those costs on to the people who live in Petaluma! We must make sure that the taxpayer is not left with paying for the burden of new traffic congestion and increased city services.

The Petaluma City Council lets builders and land speculators off of the hook for the costs of building. The projects noted here are only the latest examples. Other examples include the small park fee builders pay in Petaluma. In Windsor the Park fee for new houses is approximately $7,000, in Petaluma it is only $4,000. As a result Petaluma City Parks can't be maintained and Petaluma's swimming pool is closed for over half the year. In Santa Rosa builders who don't want to build affordable housing pay an additional $9,700 to the city; in Petaluma we only receive $2,400 when builders don't want to contribute to making housing more affordable.

We need building fees that help Petaluma to grow and be affordable. We cannot simply be continually dependent on more and more building, until we are built-out like Rohnert Park.

Council members Moynahan, O'Brien, Canevero, Harris and Healy all ran on improving our streets. Yet, they received up to 77% of their campaign contributions from building interests mostly located outside Petaluma. No wonder we have such low building fees, NO wonder builders are rushing their projects into the city's approval pipe-line.

What we need is a 30 year vision for Petaluma. This vision must consider the actual costs of building and not confuse building more with growing a healthy town for the next generation. We need to develop the town center of Petaluma and require builders to be partners in growth, and not exploit the public trust for private gain, as is supported by most of the current City Council.

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